The Australia exhibit is particularly good, imho. And fun fact - the guy who did all the voice recordings for the exhibit used to train dogs for the Australian military before he moved to the US. I've worked for him - he's the general manager of the ARL now.

\Plus they had Irene Pepperberg to speak last year. I got to meet one of my lifelong inspirations and she was brilliant.\\ One of the best zoos I've been to imho.\\\ The red pandas are waaay too much fun to watch

madanimalscientist:The ARL by the way is the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, one of the best animal shelters in the nation. Been volunteering there for two years and loved every minute of it.

All but one of my current animals have come from there. Its the only group I regularly donate money to, they do good work. That building they have north of town is the best shelter I have ever visited.

I've worked on a lot of academic papers there actually - they work closely with the animal science program at Iowa State University to make sure they're at the forefront of shelter medicine and enrichment, and Mick (the general manager) really knows his stuff. Easily the best shelter I've seen - the animals are well cared for, get lots of socialization and attention, and they have won a lot of awards.

\Got 4 papers from research there\\ Start my PhD this fall in animal science\\\ Gonna miss volunteering there when I move